


Giving It Back

by jessebee



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Depends how hard you squint, Fix-It, Gen, Is It pre-slash?, Major Character Injury, Qui-Gon Lives, Too Much Of A Good Thing Is Effing Dangerous, because I said so, the Force works in mysterious ways
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-31
Updated: 2018-05-31
Packaged: 2019-05-16 05:24:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14805188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessebee/pseuds/jessebee
Summary: Obi-Wan doesn't step over the line.He fucking well leaps.





	Giving It Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kettish](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kettish/gifts).



*

 

_It could not happen like this._

He knew as surely as he knew his own name, the coming decades exploding in his mind in less than a split second. Knew that the worlds would end in red and black, blown apart in fire and genocide and aching, unbearable grief if the man in his arms died now. Not the future in motion, but _**fact**_ as real as the tide of the Force around them, rising through his body and mind in a way he’d only dreamed possible, Living, Unifying, it was all the same, one massive incomprehensible flood.

 _ **This**_ was the shatterpoint, right here: the pivot around which the galaxy would swing. His own self was less than a blip on the longest range scanners next to this.

The barest breath of sound, fragment of a smile; the tremble-brush of Qui-Gon’s fingers against Obi-Wan’s cheek.

Obi-Wan blinked and felt his own mouth pull in a wobbly smile, looking down on Qui-Gon's face; blinked again against the hot blur of tears. His master had always had the bluest eyes Obi-Wan had ever seen. Obi-Wan would take that sight with him, wherever it was that he was going.

Force poured into him – in and through and out in a torrent that painted his skin and Qui-Gon's hair with a glow brilliant to Obi-Wan’s inner sight, blindingly beautiful and ever brighter until the very air caught fire with colors he couldn’t name, and Obi-Wan laid his hand over the rent in Qui-Gon's tunics and the destroyed flesh beneath.

“… what – _no –_ ” Barely even a gasp as Qui-Gon's fingers curled weakly around Obi-Wan's wrist.

Obi-Wan smiled again. _There is no fear, no death; there is only and always the Force_. “I will do as I must, Master,” he whispered, and rested his forehead against Qui-Gon's shock-cold one and closed his eyes. _Do, or do not._

 _ **Live**_.

 

*

 

Soft.

Soft and warm, much nicer than the cold cold hard, and the air smelled of antiseptics and bacta and clean fabrics and he reached out for the other, the most dear one in his mind, warmest comfort of all and he was – Alone? Where – alone?

A twitch of pain. In his chest – _Padawan?_

Red over everything, drenched in shield fire and ozone and agony – _Obi-Wan._

_/OBI-WAN!/_

“Oh, I heard that. Easy, Master Jinn.” Warm – hand? – on his chest. “Shh, no, don't try to move yet. Easy now.”

_/Where is – /_

“In the next bed asleep and I'll thank you not to wake him up.”

Safe, then. Qui-Gon sighed. And he knew that … voice, didn’t he? He knew that voice. / _Vokara?/_

Warmth tingled from the hand on his chest, the familiar soothing slide of Force healing dulling a little of the deep ache below his breastbone; warm amusement in her voice. “Really, it says terrible things that you know my voice before you open your eyes.”

Opening his eyes … yes, he should do that.

Blue greeted him, and he blinked a few times to try and clear fuzzy vision.

“Here.”

Soft cloth passed over his eyelids, moistness wiping away whatever had been blurring his sight. Qui-Gon opened his eyes again.

Soft blue skin and dark cream robes, and the curve of lekku. Knight Healer Vokara Che regarded him with assessing eyes of a deeper blue.

“W … ” The unmistakable sickly-sweet of bacta clogged the back of Qui-Gon's throat, and he gave up on physical speech for the moment. _/Where is he?/_

The Twi'leki healer's palm was cool against his cheekbone as she turned his face gently to the left.

Obi-Wan was a line of padawan under a light blanket, his hair a copper splotch against the pillow and his skin nearly as pale as the bedsheets, his sprawl the one that meant he was utterly, completely exhausted and possibly injured. But there were no tubes, no lines, nothing visible to show trauma; just Obi-Wan there asleep, chest rising and falling in unhurried rhythm.

Qui-Gon tried swallowing again, with marginally better luck. Something was wrong. Badly, badly wrong.

_/I don't feel him./_

He turned his head back to look at Che, and his breath stuttered when even that small motion hurt. _/Vokara, I don't – I can barely_ feel _him./_

“Didn't I tell you not to move yet?” Che scolded him. More energy flowed from her, easing the smaller ache and bringing exhaustion in its backwash. “What do you remember, Qui-Gon?”

Qui-Gon closed his eyes. Fighting. Running, fighting, dueling in black and red. Fighting a living weapon, tempered death – _keep Obi-Wan away –_

Losing.

Darkness –

– and Light.

“Stabbed,” he whispered. / _I was stabbed./_ His eyes snapped open and he stared up into Che's blue ones _. /I was_ dead _./_

“Yes,” Che said, with that brusque gentleness endemic of Healers everywhere. “Yes, you were.”

 

*

 

“How are you feeling?”

Obi-Wan thought about opening his eyes, and decided against it. Damn Healers only woke you up to ask you that and then tell you to go back to sleep anyway, and his solitary little room was not interesting enough to stay awake for.

And this was – what? The second time around? Third? More? Of course, that he’d been there to wake up at all was a Force-delivered miracle. Or so he'd been told. He thought. Maybe. Didn’t matter.

What mattered was that it had _worked_.

So, how did he feel? He … ached.

Ached, hells. He _hurt_. Possibly a little less than the first times he’d flirted with consciousness, but he _hurt_. “Raw,” he whispered, hoarsely. “ _Inside_ , like … been fireblasted.” Blasted through every cell in his body and then out, through the palm of his right hand, the only physical damage he’d noticed so far.

“That is basically what happened, we think.”

Obi-Wan did open his eyes then, and stared at her. “You ‘think’?” he said, or tried to. Coughed, and tried again, with more success. Everything that didn’t hurt felt – muffled, like it was under too many layers of padding, including his Force-sense. Especially his Force-sense.

Knight Healer Che raised the head of the bed he was in, and helped him take a few small sips of something cool and soothing, then set the liquibulb aside. Obi-Wan blinked a couple of times and squinted, inviting his sight to clear. Same little room, and it definitely was not one in the Temple Halls of Healing. So – still on Naboo? But Knight Che was here –

Che heaved a sigh, and glowered at him as only she could. “Kenobi … ” She shook her head. “Only you.”

Obi-Wan blinked at her now, questioning, and the Twi'leki Healer’s glower shifted into a glare. She looked tired, he thought.

“From the first time they assigned me to you and your Master, you have been an utter pain in my lekku, you know that?”

“… ‘m talented,” Obi-Wan whispered.

Che snorted. “That kind of talent I could do without. Padawan, I am going to need your help here, all right?”

Okay, now he _was_ confused.

“Are you awake enough now to remember this conversation if we have it?”

Obi-Wan nodded cautiously.

Che leaned closer. “What you did was manage – somehow – to not only tether life to a body it was leaving, but heal that body enough to sustain it, as well, until the Naboo healers could take over. In doing so, you gave yourself a phenomenal case of psychic over-extension.”

A case of what? “I … what?”

“Obi-Wan, I'd never even _seen_ a case of over-extension; I'd only ever read about them. I commed my Master and he’d seen exactly one. In three decades.”

Oh, he was awake now. Something in Obi-Wan’s insides went cold, branching frost up his spine, even through the drugs he was sure he was on. How bad might he be feeling if he _wasn’t_ on them?

Che sighed. “Look. The Force is infinite. We know this. Through it all things are possible, we are told. Luminous beings are we,” she said, repeating one of Yoda’s favorite sayings, “and that’s great, but bodies are finite, no matter what the old troll says about crude matter. Bodies are flesh and fluid, and flesh and fluid can only do so much. With me so far?”

Obi-Wan nodded again, still being careful. He’d never heard Che, or any healer for that matter, speak to himself or to Qui-Gon quite like this – the novelty alone would have been enough to keep him concentrating.

“Our bodies determine our Force sensitivity. We use midichlorian counts to measure potential ability, how much of a connection to the Force a being might achieve, yes? Well, that same thing regulates – we think – how much of a connection our bodies can actually handle.”

Obi-Wan’s brow furrowed. He’d never heard things put like that before, either.

“There are – fail-safes, let’s call them, built into us, into our 'crude matter,' to ensure that a being, a Jedi, does not go further, manipulate more of the Force, than its body can handle.”

“That’s … never talked about,” Obi-Wan said slowly.

“Of course not.” Che crossed her arms. “No one wants to take a chance on stunting a Jedi’s training by inferring that there are some things which can’t be done.”

Force help him, Obi-Wan couldn't tell if that was sarcasm or not.

“And no one ever reaches their upper limit, which doesn't actually say much for our training, and so the fact that there _are_ limits never gets mentioned.” She eyed him. “And then? Then there is you.”

Oh? Uh-oh.

“You, Padawan Kenobi, reached your limit and blew past it like it wasn't even there. What you're feeling like now is the result of that. You somehow managed to channel an impossible amount of Force in order to hold Master Jinn to life, and came within a hair's breadth of losing your own life in the process.”

Uh-oh.

“You're … ” She blew out a long breath. “You're burned, Obi-Wan. Inside. The parts of you, both psychic and physical, that allow you your connection to the Force, are scorched from channeling that much energy.”

“How – ” He swallowed and tried again. “How bad?”

Che's mouth pursed. “Think of trying to hold your lightsabre blade with your bare hands.”

 _Sithspit_.

“And I cannot use any sort of Force healing on you because I would only be applying more of the very thing that caused the injury. Any touch of Force right now would be like putting hot water on burned skin, which is why your Force sense is being dulled as much as we can. The only answer we have for this right now is time, Padawan. Which is why I need your help. You must be deliberately cut off from the Force in order to heal, and you _must_ _not_ _fight_ _this_.”

Obi-Wan gaped at her, no doubt doing his best impression of a stunned tiki-fish. Cut off from the Force.

Cut. Off.

He managed to swallow, finally. “H-how long?”

“At the very least, four tendays. Quite possibly longer.”

“But you – d-don’t know?”

Che heaved another, actual sigh. “Did you miss the part where I said this never happens? That’s correct, I don’t know. We don’t know. We are not quite flying blind here, but there’s not a lot of light. I need you to help me help you, Obi-Wan; there’s no quick fix for this. I can’t slap bacta on it and send you on your way, much as I’d like to, understand? I need you, for once in your life, to follow medical advice.” She leaned closer. “I don’t want to have to be the one to tell Qui-Gon Jinn that he’s lost another Padawan.”

Obi-Wan’s blood ran to ice.

Because that would be exactly right. If Obi-Wan’s ability to touch the Force was damaged – _gone_ – If Obi-Wan had saved his Master only to lose him again by destroying everything they’d worked for together – Qui-Gon. _Oh, Master._

Former Master.

Because Qui-Gon had – did Che know about – ?

Not now. _Not._ _N_ _ow._ “C-can I see him? Soon? Now?”

Che’s right lek twitched. “If I let you out of this bed and into a hoverchair, can I trust you to behave?”

If it meant he'd get to see Qui-Gon right now? Healer-blessed? Obi-Wan swallowed again and ignored his aches the best he could, slapping down his instinctive reach for the Force to release the pain to. “Yes. You can. W-what do you need me to do?”

 

*

 

Something shifted, strengthened a little, at last, at last, in that horribly muted place in his mind where his padawan should be, and Qui-Gon turned toward it. Rose slowly, using the Force's aid, pulling out of the depths of himself to surface, meeting the pain and stepping through it, a stutter as he breathed around it, unavoidable but less, just a touch less –

“Master?”

He opened his eyes, and Obi-Wan was there. Seated in a hoverchair, pulled as close to Qui-Gon's bed as he could get. Still a shadow to Qui-Gon’s Force-sense but solid to all his others: too-pale skin and bloodshot eyes, smelling of sweat and pain; the familiar touch of a 'sabre-callused hand on Qui-Gon’s wrist.

Qui-Gon had had time to think now, when he could, past drugs and pain and healing trance. One couldn’t change the past nor re-live it, but one could, and should, learn from it. He’d told Obi-Wan that more than once: nothing happens in a vacuum. Every successful diplomat knew this.

When had he himself forgotten?

Qui-Gon turned his hand slowly over beneath Obi-Wan’s palm, and curled his fingers around Obi-Wan’s hand. “Padawan.”

A shimmer started in Obi-Wan’s eyes before he shut them and his chin dropped to his chest, affording Qui-Gon a perfect view of unwashed, bed-mashed copper hair. A breath shuddered through his apprentice. “It’s good to h-hear your voice, Master.”

Qui-Gon took a careful breath himself. “And yours, Obi-Wan.”

This would have been far easier mind to mind, but he could only barely feel the faintest edge of the training bond, never mind anything else about his apprentice, and Vokara Che had explained the situation in blunt, unsparing detail. _“No Force use, Qui-Gon: none at all. Any Force connection, whether he reaches or someone else reaches to him, could worsen the damage.”_

He squeezed Obi-Wan’s hand. “Obi.”

Another deep breath and Obi-Wan looked back at him, eyes suspiciously bright and his jaw set in that way he had when strong emotion was threatening.

 _Oh, dear one._ “You – look tired,” Qui-Gon said.

Obi-Wan’s lips parted, and then twitched up into a version, albeit a shaky one, of the impudent grin Qui-Gon secretly treasured. “You s-should see the other being.”

Qui-Gon felt a smile pulling at his own mouth, and let it, even as he rolled his head in negation against the pillow. “I’m not – so important, Padawan. Vokara has told me – what you did. You should not have,” he whispered. “You nearly died.”

“We can compare n-notes,” Obi-Wan said, a laugh or a sob beneath his voice, and shook his head. “But you are that important, exactly that important. No, shh,” he said when Qui-Gon would have spoken. That was new. “Prescience like I’ve never had it before, a screaming in my mind – if you h-had died, what would have happened, to everything, everyone – ”

He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment or two. It made the bruising under them look darker and uglier, but when he opened them again, their clear-water blue was calm. “I did as I had to, Qui-Gon.”

Not the faintest shade of doubt in Obi-Wan’s voice or face.

Something tightened in Qui-Gon’s throat. “And if you’ve – damaged – yourself, beyond recovery?”

Obi-Wan smiled again, lopsided and unsteady and yet somehow as serene as his regard. “What am I against the good of the whole galaxy?” he asked with a little shrug. “And it’s not as though there aren't many ways for me to serve the Order, just – n-not as a Knight. You haven’t l-lost me; I won’t let all your years of training go to waste. And you’ll have the chance to yell at me every time you and Anakin are in-Temple.”

Qui-Gon’s heart lurched, grieving and angry and chastised and unutterably, unbearably proud. He squeezed Obi-Wan's hand again. “Come here, can you? I won't let – Knight Che catch you out of the chair.”

Obi-Wan extricated himself from the hoverchair with a wince that hurt Qui-Gon to see, and leaned closer. Qui-Gon managed to raise his free hand enough to cup Obi-Wan's head, and urged him down until Qui-Gon could press his mouth to the younger man's forehead, to the too-frequent crease just between the eyebrows.

“ ** _You_ _are_ _a Knight,_** Obi-Wan Kenobi,” he whispered, fiercely. He'd press the words through Obi-Wan's skin and into the younger man's heart by pure blunt force if he had to. “Let no one tell you otherwise. No Trial any Council could devise could – come within a parsec of what you've done. There is a core of strength – in you that novas could not move, and such good, such _Light_ , that at times you – near take my breath away.”

Obi-Wan swallowed audibly. His padawan braid slipped forward and pooled on Qui-Gon’s chest, and the hand still wrapped with Qui-Gon's trembled. “Master –”

“Ssst. Ssh.” Obi-Wan's skin was warm against Qui-Gon's mouth, and tasted of salt and something metallic. “You will heal, Obi-Wan.” He would believe that with every fiber of himself. “You've risen to every – goal I ever had for you and beyond. You will be a – magnificent Knight.”

“Thought I was h-headstrong and impetuous,” Obi-Wan said, sounding a little damp.

 _Oh, my dear one._ “So am I,” Qui-Gon murmured, which earned him a wet chuckle, because if either of them had a quarter-credit for every time Obi-Wan had subtly or not so subtly accused Qui-Gon of just exactly that, they could build a new Temple. “But yet never without the guidance of – the Force. I know and trust, and leap – without thought because I have that trust. That's what makes – a Knight; that's what all your training has been toward, what I've been – watching for.”

He shifted his fingers in a light caress against Obi-Wan's scalp and it felt horribly incomplete, missing his student's Presence. Like holding a brilliant sun-gem wrapped in wool, muffled and indistinct, and he wanted to push the fabric away and he couldn't, he could not. “So very proud of you,” Qui-Gon whispered as exhaustion made his fingers drop, grazing the thin, messy line of Obi-Wan’s braid on the way down.

The braid Qui-Gon himself would cut, soon, very soon.

Obi-Wan pulled back enough to see him, his gaze darting over Qui-Gon’s face as if searching for something. “I’m not ready.”

“You are. Were ready – months ago,” Qui-Gon told him softly. “What more you need to learn, you cannot learn at my side. Should have put you – forward then, but I wanted your company – a little while longer.”

Obi-Wan’s mouth opened and closed again, his expression shocked. Which hurt, in more ways than one.

“I did you – disservice, Obi-Wan, before the Council and after, on the – way back to Naboo. I’m sorry.”

Obi-Wan bit his lower lip, white teeth a brief gleam. Then he nodded, slow and solemn, before he mirrored what Qui-Gon had done: he leaned forward and pressed his mouth to Qui-Gon's forehead.

Warm and chapped; and every nerve Qui-Gon had seemed to fire, to rush to that sweet point of contact. It took Qui-Gon's breath away. They had never touched like this before, or no; that wasn’t it. It was that _Obi-Wan_ had never touched _him_ like this before. Qui-Gon wanted it to never stop.

“I accept your apology, but d-don't be sorry,” Obi-Wan murmured, breath hot and sour across Qui-Gon's face, and pulled away again. A ghost of that impudent smile made a reappearance, but Qui-Gon saw, and felt, the fine tremors. “If you had put me up for the Trials sooner, I might not have been there to p-pull you back. So perhaps this is all the will of the Force after all.”

 _Not that you cripple yourself for me, it’s not,_ Qui-Gon thought fiercely, but kept that locked behind his teeth. He missed the feel of Obi-Wan’s lips on his skin with an intensity that stunned him. “Sit down – Padawan, before you fall. Knight Che would never – let us hear the end of it.”

Obi-Wan sank gingerly back down into the hoverchair but no further, his right hand resting on the edge of the bed. He wore a translucent, fingerless glove on it, Qui-Gon noticed; the kind that was a type of bacta bandage. His left hand stayed linked with Qui-Gon’s.

“I told her I’d behave,” Obi-Wan murmured, a chuckle lilting his words. “It’s why she paroled me, however temporarily. But I should l-let you rest; I can’t feel you but I know you’re hurting – ”

Qui-Gon’s fingers tightened around Obi-Wan’s without input from his brain. “I can’t feel you either, or – only barely. Except for this,” and squeezed Obi-Wan’s hand. “I … ”

“Master?”

Later, much later, Qui-Gon would recall this moment and wonder what in the galaxy he had been thinking, and decide that thinking really had had kriff-all to do with it. “Having – touching you, is – comforting. I don’t wish to give it up – yet.”

Obi-Wan’s lips parted in obvious surprise, and it seemed a moment before he could speak. “Then I won’t leave you, or l-let go of you.”

“But you need to rest.” And the solution was quite simple. “This bed – is large, even for me. There is plenty of room for you to – lie down also.”

Obi-Wan stared at him, eyes pinched a little as if in pain. Qui-Gon couldn’t read him at all, and that hurt.

Suddenly, this was very, very important.

But he’d named his apprentice a Knight, the most sacred charge a Jedi Master could utter – Obi-Wan wasn’t Qui-Gon’s to command or instruct, not anymore. “Humor your old Master?” Qui-Gon whispered. “Besides, we’ve shared bunk space not – nearly this – commodious.”

His padawan’s – his former padawan’s – face contorted into the pained look of someone trying desperately not to laugh. “You’ll be fine if you’re already p-pulling out words like that,” Obi-Wan said, climbing slowly to his feet again. “This is not a good idea.”

Qui-Gon was too busy beginning the slow process of shifting himself over to reply.

The Naboo being a kind, beauty and comfort-loving people, the bed Qui-Gon was in was indeed large, but not that large. They settled at last with Obi-Wan tucked into Qui-Gon’s side, head resting on Qui-Gon’s shoulder and body within the curve of Qui-Gon’s arm. It was a posture familiar from many trips in tight spaces on crowded ships. Obi-Wan had been younger then. At first.

Obi-Wan’s right hand lay carefully over Qui-Gon’s heart, the translucent glove-bandage a queasy shimmer over sun-darkened skin. Qui-Gon’s own hand rested around Obi-Wan’s waist, curved close.

Qui-Gon’s middle was bitching anew about the ill-advised movements, but Obi-Wan’s body bled warmth like a balm through the thin medical shirts they both wore. Undeniably _there_ ; yet still a nearly blank spot in the Force. It wasn’t enough.

It would have to be enough, for now.

Qui-Gon closed his eyes, savoring the contact. “Knight Che is going to kill me for this,” he sighed. Not that he cared.

Obi-Wan made a sleepy, negative noise. “I’ll protect you,” he mumbled, shifting closer. A moment later he twitched in that way that meant he’d fallen asleep.

_Always._

Qui-Gon’s eyes startled back open.

Tired though he was, sleep was a long time in coming.

 

*

*

*

 

**Author's Note:**

> [those years contained a lot of breathing, and I am not young.  
> in all those years you are not the first  
> to take my breath away, but you are  
> the first to give it back.]  
> \-- from "politics and sex (1): breathe"  
>  _by Candas Jane Dorsey_
> 
> from a kiss meme prompt from kettish, although I think I took the long way around: _10, 13, and/or 15 for QuiObi!!_ (10 being: 'You nearly died' kiss)
> 
> huge thanks as always to sanerontheinside for aiding, abetting, and egging on, meggory for same, merry_amelie for beta-wrangling, and culturevulture73 just because.


End file.
